The not-so-social media

Look, my life is more awesome than yours! People on social networking sites are always constantly trying to show off something or the other.

A mildly fancy lunch does not go down well unless it is preserved forever on Instagram, a road trip is not memorable enough unless poor pictures of it litter everybody’s Facebook feed, and that thought nobody cares about will end up on a Twitter timeline anyway. Oh, the humanity!

"Social media" is an appropriately deceptive name for a virtual landscape replete with puffery, hyperbole and dishonesty but very little actual socialising. Every aspect of one’s life is sanitised, cut down to an unfunny anecdote and delivered in a humble-brag worthy of an Oscar acceptance speech.

Granted, I am a somewhat active social media user, but (I hope) for slightly tangential purposes.

My Twitter page has changed from a little experiment in summary (I suffered through those high school English exams) trying to condense a lot of thoughts into meaningful 140 character dispatches to an avenue for shameless self-promotion. I have shows that people need to tune into and I’m never afraid to push those.

The only other use for my Twitter is as a training ground for my next career as a failed stand-up comedian.

My public Facebook page caters to much the same needs while my private one is to keep up with who’s having a baby (here are 3,000 awkward pictures of an uncomfortable mother and newborn to flood your feed), which of my friends has a new car (thank God for my "new" eight-year-old car) and generally make me feel inadequate about my life (master’s degree done and promotion, yay!).

Social media is a fine example of a reality-distortion field so elaborate many of its partakers buy into the point of believing this airbrushed version of their lives. My friend Joshua Kuria was lucky enough to escape it years back by deactivating his Facebook account.

“There is this whole idea of feeling pressured by what everybody else is doing and I wanted to be my own influence,” he says about it. “The social media world expects so much from those who subscribe to it, and I don’t want to be caught up with it.”

The downside to that is that it has actual ramifications on how people perceive themselves.

“Social media allows people to present a glossy, filtered view of their lives and greatly skews what success looks like,” warns a guide for entrepreneurs feeling the blues.

Endless cute pictures

Faebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has made “a bajillion dollars” from his little site that is not so little anymore, but that has been no challenge for most of his 1.3 billion users.

While a few have started great businesses, including successful games and stuff we didn’t know we needed, most are fine to just post endless cute pictures of babies — or cats — and comment endlessly on inanities.

It is this proliferation of opinion that drove TV cameraman Martin Kiio off social networking.

“On Twitter, everyone has an opinion about everything under the sun,” he says. “I figured I didn’t need it.” I pressed him if he missed Facebook, to which he shot back that he didn’t need it to talk to his friends. “But how will you know what I had for lunch?”

I inquired of the other deserter, Joshua, a worship pastor at Eagle’s Faith Christian Centre. “I don’t really care what you guys had for lunch,” he deadpanned while laughing.

I know quite a number of obsessive users of these virtual connection tools, but as a general clue, if you’re ignoring the person next to you to “speak” to one through your phone, you’ve already lost it.

Overall, “narcissism clearly leads to more social media use”, as San Diego State University professor Jean Twenge writes in the New York Times. “Social media use leads to more positive self-views, and people who need a self-esteem boost turn to social media.”

I’m all for people getting their egos boosted, but a little moderation in the oversharing would be a welcome relief. By all means, have fun, but don’t rub it in my face.

Madowo is the Online and Technology Editor at NTV. He is also a weekend news anchor and host of the Friday night chat show #TheTrend, as well as a radio show on Nation FM on Sundays from 2pm. Email him on [email protected] or blog your feedback at www.nation.co.ke)